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A free nerve ending (FNE) or bare nerve ending, is an unspecialized, afferent nerve fiber sending its signal to a sensory neuron. Afferent in this case means bringing information from the body's periphery toward the brain. They function as cutaneous nociceptors and are essentially used by vertebrates to detect noxious stimuli that often result ...
A single afferent nerve fibre branches to innervate up to 90 such endings. [citation needed] Merkel nerve endings respond to light touch. [1] They respond to sustained pressure, and are sensitive to edges of objects. Their exact functions remain controversial. [2]
Tactile corpuscles or Meissner's corpuscles are a type of mechanoreceptor discovered by anatomist Georg Meissner (1829–1905) and Rudolf Wagner. [1] [2] This corpuscle is a type of nerve ending in the skin that is responsible for sensitivity to pressure.
Free nerve endings characterize the nociceptors and thermoreceptors and are called thus because the terminal branches of the neuron are unmyelinated and spread throughout the dermis and epidermis. Encapsulated receptors consist of the remaining types of cutaneous receptors. Encapsulation exists for specialized functioning.
Thermal nociceptors are activated by noxious heat or cold at various temperatures. There are specific nociceptor transducers that are responsible for how and if the specific nerve ending responds to the thermal stimulus. The first to be discovered was TRPV1, and it has a threshold that coincides with the heat pain temperature of 43 °C.
For years, the clitoris was said to have 8,000 nerve endings — stated as fact in the 1976 book The Clitoris by Thomas Lowry and Thea Lowry, who cited a study on bovines.
2 Function. 3 Etymology and mnemonics. 4 See also. 5 References. ... Merkel nerve ending, tactile corpuscle, lamellar corpuscle, Bulbous corpuscle: Thin 1-6 4-36 III Aδ
Until recently this proposed function was controversial and hard to prove, due to the close physical association of Merkel cells with sensory nerve endings. However, recent work in mice and other model organisms demonstrates that Merkel cells intrinsically transform touch into electrical signals that are transmitted to the nervous system. [9]